Disk drives comprise a disk and a head connected to a distal end of an actuator arm which is rotated about a pivot by a voice coil motor (VCM) to position the head radially over the disk. The disk comprises a plurality of radially spaced, concentric tracks for recording user data sectors and servo sectors. The servo sectors comprise head positioning information (e.g., a track address) which is read by the head and processed by a servo control system to control the actuator arm as it seeks from track to track.
FIG. 1 shows a prior art disk format 2 as comprising a number of servo tracks 4 defined by servo sectors 60-6N, wherein data tracks are defined relative to the servo tracks 4. Each servo sector 6i comprises a preamble 8 for storing a periodic pattern, which allows proper gain adjustment and timing synchronization of the read signal, and a sync mark 10 for storing a special pattern used to symbol synchronize to a servo data field 12. The servo data field 12 stores coarse head positioning information, such as a servo track address, used to position the head over a target data track during a seek operation. Each servo sector 6i further comprises groups of servo bursts 14 (e.g., A, B, C and D bursts), which comprise a number of consecutive transitions recorded at precise intervals and offsets with respect to a servo track centerline. The groups of servo bursts 14 provide fine head position information used for centerline tracking while accessing a data track during write/read operations.
Data is typically written to data sectors within a data track by modulating the write current of a write element, for example, using a non-return to zero (NRZ) signal, thereby writing magnetic transitions onto the disk surface. A read element (e.g., a magnetoresistive (MR) element) is then used to transduce the magnetic transitions into a read signal that is demodulated by a read channel. The recording and reproduction process may be considered a communication channel, wherein communication demodulation techniques may be employed to demodulate the read signal.
A common demodulation technique employed in disk drives is known as partial response maximum likelihood (PRML), wherein the recording channel is equalized into a desired partial response (e.g., PR4, EPR4, etc.), the resulting read signal sampled, and the signal samples demodulated using a ML sequence detector. The ML sequence detector is commonly implemented using the well known Viterbi sequence detector which attempts to find the minimum distance sequence (in Euclidean space) through a trellis. The accuracy of a Viterbi sequence detector matches a true ML sequence detector only if the signal noise is time invariant (data independent) and white (statistically independent) with a Gaussian probability distribution. Any deviation of the signal noise due, for example, to miss-equalization, reduces the accuracy of the Viterbi sequence detector.